Midlife Rebel

This afternoon, I have been sketching for the Artist badge. In the supermarket I found a nicely formed bright red pepper and decided to make this my still life subject. It was quite some time ago that I last drew from a still life object rather than a photograph. The sketching was quite enjoyable and I liked that it didn't take me hours and hours to do, unlike the Twiggy portrait I did previously for the Artist badge. Pencils have always been my favourite medium to work with. I feel a lot more confident with pencils rather than paint as it's easier to fix any mistakes or parts of a picture I don't like. On completing this sketch I have now earned my first Rebel badge. I am now the proud owner of the Artist badge!  

Today I completed this wire rabbit sculpture. I bought the wire rabbit kit from artist Zack Mclaughlin. It's worth checking out Zack's website www.paperandwood.co.uk as his creations are stunning. I have never made anything like this before. I hope I did his rabbit justice. The first step of the kit was the most difficult. I had to bend the wire into various shapes using a template. The wire was hard to bend into the correct shape and I could not do this as accurately as I would have liked. I really did not enjoy this first step and at this point was unsure if the sculpture was going to work out at all. The next stages of the wire sculpture were a lot more fun. I really enjoyed seeing the rabbit take form even though it was a bit fiddly at times having to hold parts in place when wrapping the wire round to secure them. I kept going and my patience finally paid off. The instructions were easy to understand, even for me as someone who can get confused easily! I would defi...

It has taken me a while but I have finally completed a second project for my Artist badge. I have drawn a portrait in coloured pencil of the iconic model Twiggy. I haven't done a full colour human portrait since my days at uni so my confidence was lacking and my skills a bit rusty during this task. I spent quite a lot of time on the drawing, completing an hour or two here and there. I struggle to focus on drawing for long periods of time and to be honest I didn't really enjoy doing the portrait. The only part I can say I did enjoy was colouring in the earrings as this felt more relaxing and required less intense focus. Another reason I found the portrait difficult was because the quality of the print out I was drawing the image from wasn't very good and it was difficult to see details in the image. I was looking at a digital image on my phone some of the time for better clarity but this was a bit of an awkward method of doing things. However, even though I didn't really...